


Insight

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Hospitals, Inline with canon, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, Painkillers, Pre-Relationship, Serious Injuries, Sharing Clothes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:11:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23804401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "It would be nice to live in a world where Gokudera could persist in blissful ignorance for at least a few milliseconds longer, where the sound of that voice wasn’t such a fixed part of his life that he can recognize it instantly even through the haze of whatever painkillers are trickling through the needle set into the juncture of his elbow." Gokudera comes to after his run-in with Kokuyo and finds Yamamoto and unlooked-for understanding waiting for him.
Relationships: Gokudera Hayato/Yamamoto Takeshi
Comments: 12
Kudos: 67





	Insight

For the first few minutes of consciousness, all Gokudera can feel is the hurt.

He’s hardly a stranger to pain. Gokudera has spent over half his life fending for himself on the least savoury streets of Italy, armed with a weapon of choice that is unstable at best and suicidally dangerous at worst. He has blown himself up on more occasions than he can count, has drawn up to the very verge of death and looked over into the endless oblivion that waits patiently on the other side; this isn’t the first time he has dragged his bloody body back to life through stubborn force of will, and he doubts very much that it will be the last. So it’s not that he’s incapacitated by the pain; it’s that he has  _ been _ incapacitated, by something or someone else, until his thoughts hover at the same hazy distance to which the dull, throbbing ache across his chest has been forced by whatever medication is coursing through his veins.

He will be  _ pissed _ about this later, he decides, while his eyes are still shut and his heart is just beginning to get the message that he wants to be conscious and it should pick up the pace to allow him to do anything more strenuous than lying prone across what he assumes is a hospital bed. There are dangers to the Tenth out on the streets at this exact moment, and taking a chestful of needles is hardly a good excuse for the Vongola right-hand man to be trapped in a hospital room with an IV in his arm and what a moment of concentration confirms to be an oxygen mask strapped around his face. For all Gokudera knows the Tenth could be fighting for his life right now, unprotected by the defensive wall of Gokudera himself, and struggling through the bleary haze of painkillers is no way for Gokudera to get back onto his feet. He can take care of himself, can fight through far worse pain than a few needles are likely to cause, and when he finds out who it is that decided to baby him into medical care he’s going to  _ personally _ deliver a bomb to their face. With this decided, and with his heart rate beginning, finally, to engage with the instruction delivered by his intent, Gokudera collects the full force of his willpower and commits to the inevitable consequences of opening his eyes.

There’s nothing to see, for the first minute. He’s in a medical facility, of course, though the implication of that was abundantly clear from the crisp antiseptic smell in the air and the plastic mask fogging his breath in front of his mouth with each exhale. The ceiling is blandly white, inoffensively sterile and illuminated to something a little more natural by what Gokudera assumes to be the same midday sunlight that accompanies his last memory of fading consciousness on a Namimori street. Gokudera stares at the ceiling for a heartbeat, collecting himself for the effort required to turn his head and brace an elbow at the bed beneath him to push himself up, and it’s as he’s drawing a breath to commit to the action that a voice breaks over him with all the excessive cheer of an alarm clock.

“Ah, Gokudera! You’re awake!”

Gokudera could wish that he didn’t recognize that particular offensively cheerful lilt over his name as immediately as he does. It would be nice to live in a world where he could persist in blissful ignorance for at least a few milliseconds longer, where the sound of that voice wasn’t such a fixed part of his life that he can recognize it instantly even through the haze of whatever painkillers are trickling through the needle set into the juncture of his elbow. There are a lot of things that Gokudera could wish for, and does, briefly and vehemently, as he gives up the clarity of vision to shut his eyes and focus his efforts on the expression of a grimace instead. Then he heaves a sigh into the mask strapped over his face and opens his eyes again, armed now with the glare that is the only response deserved by the beaming smile waiting for him.

“Baseball idiot,” Gokudera growls. The sound is somewhat softened by the interruption of the mask, and the force of it against the inside of his chest spikes the distant ache to an immediate, sharp pain, but Gokudera just lets the hurt deepen his grimace as he lifts his hand to brace against it. He finds the weight of bandages waiting for him, bound tight around the throbbing injury beneath, and the soft cotton of a t-shirt instead of the crisp button-up he had been wearing and presumably bled onto. At least he’s wearing a shirt. That will make it easier to extricate himself from medical attention and return to the job he should be doing. Gokudera tips his head to the side so he can glare at the smile currently beaming down at him from the figure leaning in over the edge of the bed. “What are  _ you _ doing here?”

Yamamoto does what he always does when Gokudera glares, or scowls, or snaps at him, which is to say drops into the hallucination he cultivates where they are the best of friends and Gokudera has offered him some kind of gratitude or the least indication of appreciation, and expands the scope of his smile into a burbling laugh. “Shamal asked me to keep an eye on you!” he says, and lifts a thumb to gesture towards what Gokudera assumes is the door to whatever space he’s currently held in. “He wanted to talk to Bianchi about something and said you’d try to leave if someone wasn’t here to stop you.”

Gokudera grimaces. “Pervert doctor,” he says, and slides his elbow farther under himself so he can actually begin the process of rising. “At least he’s keeping sis occupied.” He tips himself sideways, shifting his balance so he can lever himself upright with a minimum of strain across his well-bandaged injuries.

It’s a good precaution, one Gokudera has learned well enough to make it habit more than conscious thought, but even with this consideration the effort of pushing sharply against his elbow to rise from the crisp white of the hospital bed flares such a rush of pain up his spine that for a brief, dangerous moment his vision blanks to white. It’s only the grit of his teeth set deliberately together that keeps him from yelping at the pain, a fact for which Gokudera is almost as grateful as the evidence that he has, in fact, managed to remain upright instead of falling back down to the bed where he began. He congratulates himself on his determination, appreciating this proof of his own willpower for a moment; and then the pain begins to recede from the shoreline of his mind, and he becomes aware of the arm bracing around his shoulder and the relative likelihood that the extra support has more to do with his position than anything of his own doing.

Yamamoto’s laugh is much louder from close-up. Gokudera flinches at the strained edge on it as if the involuntary motion will effect anything more than another pulse of agony from his chest. “Careful there!” Yamamoto advises. “You’re hurt.”

Gokudera huffs an exhale, and then manages to take another breath without actually letting it break into a whimper, which he counts as victory for himself. “No, you think?” he says, with enough acid on his tone to cover the thrum of hurt with sarcasm. “Was it the hospital bed that tipped you off, or the IV drip?”

Gokudera lifts his hand to push at Yamamoto’s shoulder and shove the other back and away from the support he seems so determined to offer. There’s not much strength to the effort, much though Gokudera might wish to offer it, but Yamamoto falls back all the same, though the press of his palm lingers at Gokudera’s back, fitting into the dip between Gokudera’s shoulderblades just over the line of the bandages binding his chest. Gokudera thinks about shrugging the touch free, but any sharp movement of his shoulders seems like a bad idea to even his self-destructive nature, and there is a sort of reassuring stability to the hand at his back, like the whole world could go to pieces and that support would still be there. Gokudera can feel his face flushing with self-consciousness and pulls his attention firmly away from Yamamoto’s existence, and touch, and any indication of gratitude Gokudera might have for the support he suspects is holding him upright.

Unfortunately Yamamoto doesn’t seem capable of letting himself be forgotten, because he follows Gokudera’s valiant efforts with a sound that Gokudera might call a laugh, if he didn’t have an excess of evidence that Yamamoto’s laughter is bright, and enormous, and definitely not a kind of stifled exhale barely at the edge of hearing. “Yeah,” Yamamoto says, and  _ that’s _ weird too, his voice is strange and softer than Gokudera has ever heard him before. “No, it was the blood that did that.”

Gokudera doesn’t  _ want _ to turn his head. He wants to go on glaring at the far side of the hospital room, and he wants to be whole and uninjured and free of a pain so vivid it steals the clarity of his vision, and he wants to be  _ alone _ or at least not with Yamamoto Takeshi’s hand at his back the only thing keeping him upright. But what he wants seems to have very little to do with the reality of his present situation, and in the first instinct of confusion Gokudera’s gaze slides sideways through the weight of his loose hair to seek out a better read on that oddly ragged edge on Yamamoto’s usual sunshiney brilliance.

Yamamoto isn’t looking at Gokudera. That’s weird in itself; Gokudera hadn’t realized until this exact moment how everpresent the other’s attention is, how accustomed he has become to finding a warm golden gaze waiting for him whenever he deigns to glance in Yamamoto’s direction. But now Yamamoto’s head is ducked forward into profile, his expression angled partially away from Gokudera, and in the shadow of his hair there is something fixed and adult in the lines of his face. He’s still  _ himself_, it’s not as if he has lost the soft curve of his cheeks or the gold of his eyes or the tumbled disarray of his hair; but Gokudera can see the line of Yamamoto’s jaw braced by the tension at his neck, and with the easy curve of his smile stripped flat there is something darker in his eyes, a focus that lifts the small hairs across Gokudera’s arms and at the back of his neck into a frisson of recognition. Yamamoto still looks like himself, still bears all the trappings of the dumb baseball player that has lately saddled Gokudera’s life; but for a moment Gokudera can see what lies beneath, what has been there all this time, the bedrock to the shifting sands of Yamamoto’s inanely cheerful disposition.

Gokudera can’t stop staring. His heart is beating too-fast, with a speed that he would like very much to attribute to the injury across his chest and isn’t at all sure he can while his attention remains locked on the tension cording the tendons in Yamamoto’s neck and the absolute attention darkening gold eyes to bronze. For a brief moment of vertigo Gokudera is held by the expression on Yamamoto’s face, is tripped into something terrifying close to  _ appreciation_; and then Yamamoto blinks, and turns his head, and the flicker of illusion, or maybe of insight, evaporates like it was never there at all as Yamamoto breaks into his usual blinding grin.

“It’s a good thing I showed up!” he says, sounding as cheerful as if he’s back to talking about the game he thinks they’re playing and not the blood-stained grit of reality still throbbing over Gokudera’s chest. “I don’t think Tsuna could have brought you all the way here on his own.”

“You—” Gokudera starts, and then stops, because if he can save himself from the knowledge that Yamamoto Takeshi carried him across Namimori by not asking the obvious question he will, however clear the reply is. He frowns instead and looks away from the seeming unconcern of Yamamoto’s smile so he can retreat to the immediate task of taking stock of himself.

He’s still dressed, which is something of a surprise and definitely a relief. Gokudera was prepared to stagger out of the hospital bed with no more than bandages wrapping his chest, but it’ll be much easier to pretend at physical health if he can hide the immediate proof to the contrary beneath a shirt. It’s not his, a fact abundantly clear both from the color and the span of the shoulders draping wide over his arms, but that’ll just make it easier to take off when he needs to. Gokudera reaches to tug free the oxygen mask still strapped to his face before sliding free the IV needle laid against the inside of his arm: a more careful process now than it was the first time he staged an escape from an unwanted hospital bed and gouged a week’s worth of a bruise under his skin from a unwary wrench on the needle. With that done he’s free to throw back the blankets over his legs and swing himself around to move towards standing.

All this, of course, is accompanied by that hand still lingering between his shoulders, even when Gokudera leans sharply forward to offer a strong hint that he doesn’t need any such help. When Gokudera’s feet come over the edge of the bed Yamamoto stands too, rising to hover needlessly as he reaches for Gokudera’s arm. “Are you sure you should be up?”

At least he’s not trying to push Gokudera back down. Gokudera is confident that he’s fine, that he’s had worse, that he can perform his responsibilities to the Vongola without being bedridden by a scratch; he’s less confident that he could fight off Yamamoto’s overbearing persuasion if it were accompanied by the press of a hand at his shoulder to urge him back to the bed or even just to keep him off his feet. But Yamamoto’s hands are offering support instead, that insistent one at Gokudera’s shoulders and the other catching under his arm to brace him, and he doesn’t pull away even when Gokudera scowls at the support at his elbow.

“I’m fine,” Gokudera says, and leans forward to shove his feet into his waiting shoes so he can stand. He manages this well enough until he has to straighten again; then his vision flickers, his breath catches, and for a moment he’s reaching out to clutch at the support keeping him on his feet. It takes a moment for the dizziness to pass; when it does Gokudera finds himself angled sharply to the side, one hand bruising at the steady line of Yamamoto’s arm and the other fisted at the collar of his school jacket.

Yamamoto hasn’t moved, either in or away, but Gokudera still hisses protest in the back of his throat and pushes to make his grip at the other’s coat a shove instead. “Let me go,” he says, and snatches his arm away from Yamamoto’s hold so he can take full control of his own balance. “I’m  _ fine_.”

“Haha,” Yamamoto laughs. “Yeah, okay.” He doesn’t step away, just lets his hand fall to his side as he goes on hovering just at Gokudera’s shoulder, and Gokudera tries very hard not to be grateful for the suggestion of help offered by Yamamoto’s proximity if his legs prove insufficient to the task of keeping him upright. He’s  _ fine_, he’s perfectly able to walk under his own power, and after another moment he is even able to demonstrate such, by lifting his head and tossing his hair back and moving towards the door.

Yamamoto trails him, because of course he does, and Gokudera takes the higher road of not commenting on this. Unfortunately Yamamoto proves himself incapable of appreciating a comfortable silence, as he chases away the one Gokudera is cultivating while he’s standing holding the door open for Gokudera’s perfectly normal and not-at-all careful pace to carry him through it.

“That color looks good on you,” Yamamoto volunteers, which comment Gokudera hadn’t asked for and wasn’t thinking about. Gokudera pauses on the threshold, one hand touching and definitely not bracing at the doorway next to him, and lifts his gaze to scowl mistrust at Yamamoto’s bright smile. Yamamoto meets this, of course, with a laugh, and a lift of his free hand to ruffle through his already thoroughly-ruffled hair. “You don’t wear blue very much.”

Gokudera scoffs in the back of his throat. “No,” he says. “I don’t want anyone to mistake me for  _ you_.”

Yamamoto is still smiling, without any indication of cooling in the warmth of his expression, but something alters in the familiar simplicity of his face, another one of those seismic shifts cracking open a base foundation to reveal something impossibly lower. The corner of his mouth twists up, tugging his easy grin lopsided, and when he blinks his eyes collect some of the haze from his lashes. His gaze slips away from Gokudera’s eyes, drifting down over the other’s face and across the front of the overlarge shirt hanging off the other’s shoulders, and his teeth catch against the softness of his lower lip to bite idle friction against it. Gokudera can feel the weight of Yamamoto’s eyes on him like a touch, as if that hand at his shoulders is back but gentler, sliding up his neck to feather tenderness into the fall of his hair, and heat climbs across his collarbones and up his throat to bleed color over his face as he realizes whose athletic shoulders  _ would _ fit into the worn-soft fabric hanging off his own, and why exactly it is that Yamamoto is looking at him with that helpless, possessive warmth behind his eyes.

Gokudera grits his teeth together and hisses irritation past them. “Shut  _ up_,” he says, and turns to stride away down the hallway with his temper to give strength to uncertain steps.

He is expecting the exclamation of Yamamoto’s startled laugh, followed immediately by the squeak of the door falling shut and the easy scuff of footsteps trailing him. “I didn’t even say anything.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Gokudera tells him, barely turning his head as Yamamoto draws level with him and eases his pace to fall into stride at Gokudera’s side. “You were  _ going _ to.”

“Mm,” Yamamoto hums. “Eventually, I guess. I can’t stay quiet forever.”

“You could do me a favor and  _ try_,” Gokudera says. Yamamoto laughs again, bright and cheerful and thoughtless, just the baseball idiot he always seems to be. There’s no trace of that stern intensity when Gokudera glances sideways at him, no indication of the brief, overwhelming presence that he showed at the side of the hospital bed. Gokudera wonders if it was his imagination, just a side-effect of his painkiller-induced haze; and then Yamamoto tips his head to look at him, and for just a moment his eyes flicker on softness again, on a warmth that runs straight down Gokudera’s spine like a lit fuse.

Gokudera looks away in a hurry, ducking his head and scowling to keep his feet moving in the direction he wants them to. Yamamoto doesn’t say anything at all, just goes on keeping pace at Gokudera’s side like he’s always been there; and Gokudera keeps walking, and listens to the sound of Yamamoto’s footsteps scuffing in time with his, and lets him.


End file.
